I loved you on a lonely night
by mirajens
Summary: The consequences of love as a vice. (jellal/erza/gray/ultear)


**note:** Warnings first. A description of a miscarriage. Some sex, some references to vices. This is just carrying on with the 'four horrible people being horrible' theme, but with a different cast? Half of it, at least.

* * *

 **I loved you on a lonely night**

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Erza Scarlet was supposed to be married by now. It was July third and the clock just struck two in the afternoon. The ceremony would have been done by now and they'd be on their way to the reception. She'd have been trying hard not to cry as she admired the new silver band on her left ring finger. She'd have been cutting her way through well-wishers to admire the wedding cake her should have been husband had commissioned for her.

Erza Scarlet should have been married by now. Instead, she was looking for her panties around a dark room, trying hard not to wake a man that smelled like alcohol and fading cologne on her bed.

Circling back to the beginning (or perhaps the end?) found Erza five months ago in what was supposed to be her marital home, trying to have a conversation with her fiancé (or, she supposed, ex-fiancé; he _was_ trying to break up with her after all). And she said _trying_ because Gray wouldn't look at her. He kept finding interesting patches on the blank wall, it seemed.

Erza remembered everything Gray said. And he said quite a lot so it was surprising to remember all of it. Erza imagined it was like what multiple gunshots felt like: how painful, how shocking; was she really remembering so vividly how the bullets pierced her flesh and bore into her bones, reverberating through body, through soul, until she thought it was unbearable but she kept bearing it anyway, kept taking bullet after bullet, word after word of why Gray couldn't stay, of why he didn't love her anymore.

Yes, Erza could tell you exactly how it all went down. She could even tell you about the laughable scenario with Gray on the side of the bed that would have been his had he taken the vows of a husband. But now, what was he but a man on her bed, not even a lover, not yet an ex.

 _(And what did they call that? What was the term for the twilight of a relationship?)_

Gray said, "You want too much from me, Erza. And that's what I can't stand. I have nothing to give you, no feelings to spend on you, no desire to play house."

And so Erza countered, "Is this because I lost the baby? The doctor told you it was an accident."

Erza had miscarried three nights ago. It was what she thought Gray meant by "let's not get married," as in she thought he wanted her _to rest_ and not because he'd been seeing some other woman during the whole engagement. But that was beside the point. The point was that Erza had woken up from her after work nap, bleeding through her house clothes, feeling an acute pain in her abdomen and trying to breathe around a lump that lodged itself in her throat. Maybe women were born with the knowledge of what losing a baby felt like, or maybe it was a preternatural sense much like how a woman knew her menses were coming or how they knew their partners were cheating. Erza had known what was happening to her even before they reached the ER so when Gray pulled over in front of the driveway and helped her wobble to the reception desk, she very calmly told the nurse that she was miscarrying.

Of course, she'd been right.

"It has nothing to do with that, Erza, for Christ's sake." Now Gray's face was contorted, as if he'd just bitten into a lemon. "I wish you'd stop calling it that." _A baby,_ he meant. "It was a fetus at six weeks. Hardly a baby. You didn't even know you were pregnantꟷ"

"I didn't know I was pregnant until it was just a smear between my legs? So you've said."

"Yes." That was how he'd put it the night they came home from the emergency room. Erza wondered if he was trying to be clinical to spare her, or if he was just a hyper developed dickhead. Even now, she hated to believe the latter. He scratched his head as if he was having a hard time being patient with a dim child as opposed to discussing the baby. "I don't understand how you can feel so… maternal over a clump of cells. A clump of cells, I'll remind you, that you didn't even know existedꟷ"

"Until it was just a smear between my legs? Yes, you don't need to say that again. You sound like a broken record."

Gray regarded her with wariness, maybe to see if he _did_ need to remind her one more time. Erza was pretty sure she would clock him if he did.

"So that's it? I lost the baby, we're not getting married and you're leaving me for thatꟷI don't know what her name isꟷthat man-stealing harlot?"

Gray sighed. "Erza, she didn't _steal_ me. I'm not candy on a shelf. People can't steal people from lovers."

"Oh, surely. They only fuck men set to be wed. Men about to be fathers. Not a thief, surely. Something worse."

Erza could tell he wanted to correct her. Gray thrived off arguments. He thrived off being right, even when he wasn't. Maybe he was going to tell her _, "I never wanted to marry you anyway, Erza. And I wasn't about to be a father. Not to the clump of cells you didn't even know you had_ _ꟷ_ _"_

Which she would trustily continue, _"Until it was a smear between my legs? Yes, I know, I know."_

Thankfully, he didn't speak. He looked tired. Gray hated it when he was made out to be the bad guy even if it _was_ him leaving his recently miscarried bride-to-be for some man-stealing harlot. What he said came back to her at that moment. He'd said, "I can't be with you anymore because it makes me feel like a villain about this whole thing," and the responding thoughts in Erza's mind had been sarcastic. _Oh so YOU feel bad?_

Gray picked up his jacket off the foot of the bed. Then, he turned to study the bedroom littered with boxes of his things and hers. It had taken so much to convince him to move into a new place together. Now, it was all for nothing. Erza thought that right now, he looked like a gentrifier that staked bloody claim on a virgin land before deciding that it wasn't something he wanted anyway.

"Look, I know this is shitty. I'll have Natsu pick my stuff up, okay? You need some space. And ah… I can pay you back for all the expenses we can't refund. We can work it out."

Erza wondered if this was some sort of alimony for the almost wife. Kind of like: _I'm sorry I played with your feelings. Allow me to pay off the wedding we're not having anymore._

Gray hovered by the end of the bed, just a few steps away from where Erza sat and he couldn't even give her any physical comfort after turning her life on its head. Or _any_ comfort at all. But it wasn't like she expected a whole lot from Gray Fullbuster at this point.

She wondered if maybe he'd just been looking for a sign all along. Perhaps shed been too blind to see how distant and off put he'd become. It _was_ kind of evil that he'd dump her when she was still bleeding both metaphorically and literally from losing his child.

When Gray walked out the door, Erza cried for a whole half hour, got angry for twice that time, and then was calm by six pm. She thought: _I can't be a mess now. I have dinner to make and a wedding to cancel._

* * *

Fast forward to now, wherein Erza ended up in bed with someone else. For what _did_ scorned women do anyway? Take up crochet and vengefully make scarves? Adopt a hoard of cats? Get phoenix tattoos? Develop a vice problem? All of that seemed too textbook to Erza so she went a step above (or below, depending on how you looked at it) and fucked her best friend.

For the record, she didn't mean to do it.

She didn't mean to do many of the things she's done recently, and she couldn't even make herself feel better by blaming it all on tequila: the stale taste in her mouth, the pounding behind her eyes, the nausea rolling in her gut, the man sleeping on what would've been Gray's side of the bed.

Erza had A History with Jellal, the man in question. One so jam-packed with complication and confusion, she could call it nothing other than A History. It went something like: they used to date, he left the country all of a sudden, Erza got pissed, Jellal came back and she was already dating someone else and three more years of it never being the right time and them never being the right people for each other. It got tiring, so they decided to just be friends. Friends had no right to long for friends so they didn't. After a while, it took root. Nowadays, Erza only ever felt a phantom kind of yearning when she saw Jellal, easy enough to ignore. It was like breaking a limb and never fully trusting it to not hurt ever again.

Now, they had slept with each other. Erza wasn't naïve enough to believe that this would be without complications. People just did regrettable things when they were hurting. Jellal probably wouldn't have gone through with it either, were it not for the fact that he, too, was going through heartache. Gray's man-stealing harlot ( _Ultear_ , Erza remembered. Satan had a name after all) had been and probably still was the object of Jellal's questionable affections (and Erza said questionable because as far as she was aware, the two of them got high and fucked and that was it) until said harlot decided that who she wanted was a man who wasn't on the market.

Really, what was it about men in a committed ( _ha!_ ) relationship that made them so desirable? And Erza didn't buy into the "loving someone you can't have" bit. Please. No love was supposed intrusive or malicious as to impose on morality and rationality. If anything, this Ultear woman probably just had a bad case of being an asshole.

Life went in circles. In a darker sentiment, life was a bitch that played games on perfectly nice people and gave happiness to people that didn't deserve it. Erza might not have made it a point to whine about what was fair or unfair but she supposed now was a good time as any.

* * *

"Do you think they really are in love?"

This was the question Erza posed one night, once the air had gone stale with sex and the heavy silence. Picture the scene: Erza on her back by the foot of the bed, limbs tangled with the scandalously sweaty sheets, chest rising and falling gentler than it had been some ten minutes ago from the latest physiological cork popping, watching Jellal rummage through the same nightstand that housed his condoms and snack stash for the wrinkled box of Marlboros.

Erza remembered from their youth, he'd decided to smoke one day and despite her annoyance, she'd gone with him to buy a pack. The red of the packaging caught his eye, and it was all he'd smoked ever since, foregoing testing his predilection on anything else. She remembered being cross because she thought it was such an out of the blue thing to wake up one day and decide to want to be a smoker then finding out weeks later that his hard-faced father had taken to beating him and smoking might not solve his problems and smoking might not numb the pain one bit but people who suffered turned to vice. She never said anything about it since, even if she still instinctively scowled when she saw him light up.

"More lousy pillow talk, Erza?" Jellal settled back against his headboard with a roll of his eyes. "I thought we agreed that we don't ruin oxytocin highs with talk of vile people."

"The same vile people you and I imagine when we're together like this?" Erza never learned how to mince her words. "And anyway, I never agreed to that. You just started having rules because you were sensitive."

Jellal cocked a brow at her and kicked her shoulder lightly. " _I'm_ sensitive? Ms. Three Minutes?"

"I was trying to match you or I'd never get off." When Jellal only barked out laughter, Erza gestured dismissively. If he was trying to distract her, he had to do a better job. He should have known she was more fixated on her ire when the waves of guilt and shame came crashing down. "Seriously. Do you think they love each other? They must, to go through all that trouble, right?"

Jellal continued mentally with a list of Gray's crimes. "Sure, Erza. Like you said, that's too much trouble for just sex." _Look at us. This is how little effort it takes to scratch an itch. You call up old flames, not make a fiasco of your life._ Maybe it was that, or Erza really just couldn't accept that sometimes, people didn't have good reasons to be so bad.

"I don't know. I have trouble believing cheaters are capable of love."

"Sounds like you only want to hear that answer, then, so what are you asking me for?" Jellal could never tell her that her innate noble spirit was not the basic for any other human. He'd loved that about her, but at the moment, he found her puritanism grating.

Erza pushed herself up on her elbows. "Will you cooperate?"

"Not until you put a shirt on. Your breasts are too amazing to inspire conversational thought," he joked. His face, unsmiling as he tapped ashes on an ugly ashtray, was at odds with his humor.

"You're impossible." Wanting to hurt, Erza almost said, _maybe this is why Ultear left you._ But she was low on confidantes so she bit her tongue. No point in losing friends just because she was wound up.

Jellal rolled his eyes again. "No, you're just consumed by this and you're mad that I'm not as invested as you are."

It was rare that her eyes matched the fire of her hair. Erza might have been a wildcard but her demeanor was normally quite placid. Now, wrath lit up her eyes. Her very posture was as taut as a band ready to snap. "Hard not to be invested when I loved the man for four years."

Jellal wanted to say, _And I didn't love? Are you the only one here who was discarded like this?_ What left his lips was something more caustic than angry. "Don't I know the feeling."

It was interesting, how easily the fire of her gaze turned into something icy. Jellal felt sweat bead on his brow. The air got thick, like there were a thousand cruel things that Erza wanted to say but she kept revising the script. He could see in her expression that she was holding back. He half wished she wouldn't so he could lash back.

"I was going to marry Gray, you know? We had our whole lives planned out. A week before he left me, we'd just finished the registry. There weren't any disagreements when we were picking out silverware, or what color and make the sofa would be, or what kind of wood we wanted for the dining table. That, for me, was end sight. I loved what we had and what we would have to come. We were going to have a baby, and I thought there would be more. Do you understand that, Jellal? I was this close to having that life with him, but he decided he didn't want that anymore. And now I have nothing." Muscles tense, Erza gathered her hair over one shoulder, needing something to do with her hands so they wouldn't shake. "So, no, I don't think you know the feeling. Maybe that hard on you had for that woman _was_ love, but you never had what I had. You never lost what I did. I'll be in the shower."

When the bathroom door closed behind Erza, Jellal went downstairs to find some food. He was sure she wouldn't want to see his face when she came out.

* * *

Erza came back three weeks later, pretending nothing ever happened. Or, at least, pretending the fight never happened. Maybe that said something about how she couldn't push through completely with any confrontations.

The problem was, Jellal was not as quick to recover from their little spat. When she found him potting some strong smelling plant on his patio, he expressed his disinterest in the takeout she had with her and all but told her to go home.

"Please, Jellal? I want to apologize. I badly want us to be friends again." Despite the lack of welcome, Erza invited herself to sit on the rocking chair so she could watch him brush off potting mix from his jeans.

Jellal looked defeated. Like he didn't want to hear his apology but he was too weary to turn her away. "What did you get?"

That made Erza's lips twitch into a smile. "Breakfast burritos."

"At five PM?"

"There are fish tacos, too." She started taking food out of the bag.

"Wow, you _really_ want to be forgiven." Jellal accepted the foil wrapped burrito and carefully peeled it with his soiled fingers.

"Am I, though? Forgiven, that is."

Jellal jerked a shoulder in answer. Erza scowled and took that as an _I'll think about it._

But it seemed the worst was not behind them. The air did not get any lighter when Jellal insisted on eating in silence and simultaneously rehoming his marigolds. Erza was almost disgusted by how he switched from gripping loam to grabbing his burrito. She might have grown up poor but her mother never raised her to act any less proper than any old highbrow.

When Jellal finished with the plants, he set the pots aside and crumpled his foil. He picked up his trash and strode into the house, leaving Erza flabbergasted with her unfinished food.

She followed him inside and found him in the kitchen with a glass of water.

"Want me to heat the tacos up so you can stop acting like a massive ass right now?"

Jellal spared her an acerbic look. "I need a shower." He tried to walk past her but she stood her ground at the doorway. "Excuse me."

She could hear him grinding his teeth as he said it. She glared at him before turning just a bit so he could side step her.

Jellal clomped up the stairs, Erza hot on his heels. He almost told her to fuck off. It was on the tip of his tongue and he could feel his lips moving to accommodate the words but thought better of it. Instead, he continued into his bedroom with the intention of shutting the door on Erza, hoping she would get the hint and just leave him alone.

Her palm caught the wood just before it slammed on her face.

He could feel his aggravation just boiling under his skin. Erza, when she looked at him so daringly and cruelly, reminded him just a bit of Ultear. They were nothing similar in appearance but the stare had the same weight. It was enough to make him grab at Erza's bicep, deliberately punitive. He ignored her pained cry and shoved her against the post of the doorway.

"You can't take a hint and fucking leave me alone?" His face was inches away so she could feel his breath against her lips. She trembled for it, for the whole of him now, and it wasn't for fear.

"Maybe if you spelled it out for me, I would have. But you're too pussy to ever say what you mean, right?" Needing to hurt but unwilling to put her hands on him, Erza aimed the same cutting look at him. "Is that why Ultear left you? She was sick ofꟷ"

He didn't let her finish. Jellal slanted his mouth over hers because it was that or he feared he would have slapped her. He wanted to. He kept his free hand fisted by his side, just in case. Hearing Ultear's name from her made something nasty toil in his gut.

He didn't expect Erza to respond in kind. Her mouth was as pliant as it had never been, hot and giving. The noises she breathed into him made him thicken painfully in his jeans. At that moment, he hated her. And he wanted to possess her.

That evening, he fucked her like she didn't mean anything. He wasn't gentle and she didn't want him to be. He pushed her on the bed and in exacting movements, rid her of her sweet smelling clothes to join the sweaty ones he'd been wearing under the sun since morning. He pulled her hair, bit her, and in turn, she left long scratches on his skin that would leave painful welts for days. They didn't say many words that night but Jellal made sure that Erza knew she couldn't blame him for another man's cruelties.

The morning Jellal woke up with a head pounding from a slew of bad sleeps, Erza was by the foot of his bed putting her underwear back on. Her hair was in a messy knot and there were marks all over her body. She looked like regret, like bitterness; she looked like what shame felt like.

She heard him shift on the bed and sat by his head when she saw he was awake. She'd hoped to make a quiet escape.

"I'm sorry about last night."

"What are you sorry for?" He wanted to hear her say it. He wanted to know if she actually knew what she was apologizing for. Erza often said sorry just to tide his anger over.

"Everything." She said. And Jellal knew that translated to _no, I don't know why your panties are in a twist again._

He sighed and just barely resisted rolling his eyes. "Just leave, Erza."

"Yes. Soon. I'm sorry we don't get along. And that these days, it's hard to. I wish this never happened. I liked being your friend." Erza had that sad look in her eyes that Jellal remembered hating seeing. He'd once felt so strongly about never wanting to see anything but a happy glint in them. What happened now, that he couldn't care less, that he thought she deserved to look so down?

"Yeah, well, it takes two to tango. We both should have known better."

"I feel sorry anyway."

"What are you trying to say, Erza?" He hated her little word games. Jellal was never in the mood for them but right now, it was especially unwanted. "Like, really. You're too old to be speaking so vaguely with a guy that you fucked until midmorning."

Erza looked irritated for a blink. She hated how crudely he spoke sometimes. "Things aren't playing out the way I thought they would."

"And what version of events did you have in mind?"

"That I fall in love with you." The twist on her lips was too wry to be a smile. "That we'd save each other from loneliness. And that's silly, isn't it? I think that coming out of this just made me despise you. You're not even trying. You're just having sex with me and being sarcastic when I want comfort."

Jellal almost said: _That's not my job. You can't expect someone to fix your life up for you. You don't lose one man and replace him with another._ Instead, he said, "So is that it? Is this goodbye, then?"

"I don't know. All I know is that I don't want to see you right now."

Ah. He was quite familiar with the Erza that couldn't commit to a feeling. "I imagine that would be easier if you got out of my house." Jellal shifted onto his back, stuffing a pillow under his head and debating whether he should wait for Erza to leave before he reached for the cigarettes in his night stand or do it now.

Erza forewent a reply. She resumed clothing with an efficiency Jellal appreciated since the air was getting rapidly heavier. He could sense her hesitating by the door of his bedroom but didn't bother looking. In the end, she left without another word and he listened for her steps down the carpeted stairs, then the closing of his front door.


End file.
